Fasten your seat belts: three big guns in marketing strategy for small-sized firms with large budget constraints are integral to your business roll-out plan – social media campaigns, content marketing and local marketing.
Social media campaigns are the most effective way for a business to get noticed and generate leads. Backstage content, or micro-influencers, or live Q and A sessions with customers can all ensure customer engagement.
Content marketing
For small businesses on a budget, content marketing can be one of the most cost-effective ways to bolster brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, and boost search engine optimisation (SEO) – without cleaning out your savings account.
The creation of educational content is also a cost-effective way for companies to generate leads and attract buyers. Examples of such educational content could be blog posts, ebooks, guides and webinars, as well as videos or infographics that grab attention while communicating content.
Social media can also be a great way to advertise a product or service. Get current customers to post pictures, video reviews and testimonials of your products on social media, as user-generated content (UGC) can boost sales more than branded content and can reduce CAC. Ask Red Bull about that, whose target audience is connected by content on extreme sports and adventure; that certainly helps to connect to people who have already inherently shown an interest in the brand, helping to latch on quickly.
Email marketing
For small business owners with limited budgets, marketing can seem difficult, but it can be much easier if we consider things like email marketing as one of the many ways to reach your audience and help your sales – assuming that it fits into your goals and KPIs.
A second proven method is to provide free definitive guides/resources which will establish your brand as an expert in the field while improving SEO and potentially increasing the number of customers retained and referred.
But email marketing can be especially effective because each message can be tailored directly for each subscriber’s inbox, which is strong positioning for small businesses eager to stay front of mind with their audiences, and it offers a great return-on-investment compared with other forms of advertising.
Local marketing
Small businesses looking to build market share and claim themselves as community leaders can utilise local marketing. With the help of search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising, and social media marketing they can reach new consumers via digital strategies and traditional mediums such as print media that can reach local communities through sponsoring organisations.
Digital gurus say that four out of five customers will choose a business they find on the first page of local search results, so visibility is key. If you claim and optimise your Google Business Profile, your SEO ranking will improve, and running local Facebook ads will strengthen that ranking further. Consistent entry of information across platforms bolsters consumer trust, and loyalty programmes encourage customers to keep coming back, each time building word-of-mouth referrals and brand advocacy – all of which fuels revenue and cash flow to keep the small business afloat.
Social media
A good social media strategy can help small businesses to grow their audience and brand, by creating interesting posts that attract the right traffic continuously, while platforms provide an interactive way to speak to customers, resolution of a problem right away if they ever have any questions or complaints. Lastly statistics provided by the tools to really help us keeping track on account growth, as well as demographics.
It is important to target audiences, particularly those who will benefit from the products and services sold on the social platform, while also creating engaging, shareable content. One of the ways that small businesses can take advantage of social media to achieve maximum marketing efficacy without a significant financial investment is through social media. These efforts not only provide maximum opportunity for a high return-on-investment (ROI), they break down barriers to geographically segmented markets by providing a space for owners of small businesses to engage and open up global markets for their business – an advantage that continues to be a source of contention for small firms attempting to operate on a global scale, as many large firms already operate on a global level.